Reflections or Shadows
by r4ve
Summary: Zack has just been killed, Cloud has stumbled into Midgar still sick from the mako treatments and with Hojo trying to find him. This is about how Tifa finds Cloud before the game begins.


**Reflections or Shadows**

_Crawling in my skin_

_These wounds they will not heal_

_Fear is how I fall_

_Confusing what is real_

_There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface_

_Consuming - confusing_

_This lack of self-control I fear is never ending_

_Controlling - I can't seem_

_To find myself again_

_My walls are closing in_

_Without a sense of confidence and I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take_

_I've felt this way before_

_So insecure_

_- Crawling _

_- by Linkin Park._

- - - - -

He stumbled sickly towards the gate that led, into the dirty slums.  The rain pelted endlessly down from the polluted, grey overcast skies above the city, plastering his spiky blond hair to his pale face.  He looked up pushing his wet hair from his eyes, at the huge towering gates that led into the city of Midgar.      

  The guard glanced suspiciously at the huge sword strapped on his back, but after catching a glimpse of the ShinRa emblem emblazoned on the blond's broad belt and first class uniform, quickly silenced any objections.  He kept his head down, obscuring his glowing blue eyes from site behind his dripping blond bangs, he already knew that he attracted enough attention from his sickly, deathly pale appearance and the five foot long blade, strapped to his back.  The last thing the blond needed was a ShinRa guard noticing how his eyes glowed much too brightly to be an ordinary member of ShinRa's elite fighting force, SOLDIER and report it to their superiors.  

Once word got around, Hojo's goons would be back after him again, all too happy to kill him, or drag him kicking and screaming back to the lab, nested in the small sleepy mountain town of Nibelheim, and being in his current state just didn't have a hope of putting up any sort of resistance against them.  He needed to find a safe place, somewhere totally unexpected to hide until he recovered from the "mako treatments" enough to f.  

He took a deep breath, trying to ease the waves of nausea that swept through his body.  Lifting his head he unsteadily looked around, he grinned rather wryly, Midgar hadn't changed at all, the air still had that same smoggy, artificial, metallic taste to it, the streets were still lined with piles of rubbish and rusting scrap metal.  The people that lived in the slums were the unchanged too, they still had the same dead, look of hopelessness and dejection in their eyes.  

He would never had thought that he would be glad to be back in the slums, but after five years of the white walls and endless experiments in the lab, Midgar felt like Heaven.  

He remembered, five or so years ago, walking through these same gates into the city, with all his hopes of joining SOLDIER, of becoming more than the small boy that was always picked on in his home-town.    

Flashes of Midgar blurred past.  He was used to the lurching of the train now, after all he had lived in it for a couple of weeks. They were watching, he kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut hiding their glow, he knew they were all staring at him, because of the large blade of the buster sword that rested across his knees.  He dared not open his eyes, knowing that they would glow brightly in the dim lighting of the train.

The train passed under the ID checkpoint, but the blond wasn't worried.  Even though he didn't have any Identification he wasn't worried.  In ShinRa's eyes, Cloud Strife didn't exist, and according to their databases, had never did.  Hojo had made sure of that.  He no longer had the Identification chip embedded in his wrist, and his matching records in the ShinRa database had been erased.  Technically he didn't exist.  

- - - - -

It was early morning in Midgar, although with the plate perpetually looming above, it was hard to tell.  Sometimes she wished it would be nice to see the sky instead of the unyielding metal, feel the sun's warm rays shining down instead of the artificial glare of the mako powered flood lights that illuminated the polluted city.  

As she walked past Johnny waved at her from his perch on the rusty metal steps of his parent's small rundown home.

"Where ya goin' Tifa?" he asked mockingly, "Goin' to blow up another reactor?"  He grinned when he saw her scowl good naturedly at him.

"Actually no, but I'll see ya later okay?"  

- - - - -

There were few people loitering around the station waiting for the train to arrive.  Not that you could call it much of a station, it was more of a set of cracked, graffiti covered, concrete steps that led to an equally dishevelled platform. A few lampposts that used to, sometime in the past lit the steps, were dark.  The lamps, after having to be constantly replaced, had long fallen into disrepair after being replaced with the huge flood lights that shone down from high on the plate, illuminating the slums with its mako tinged light.

She rounded the corner, to the steps that led to the platform, worriedly checking her watch.  She glanced up as she heard the incoming train arriving and gasped as she felt the blood drain slowly from her face.  He was sitting on the edge of the steps, facing away form her.  He was clothed in loose black pants, blue turtle neck and heavy brown combat boots, the First Classer's SOLDIER uniform.  His rebellious hair, which was what had originally caught her attention, stood in untidy blond spikes.  He sat slumped forward, his head was propped up on gloved hands, his elbows resting on the broad blade of the sword that lay across his knees.  

Tifa approached slowly, still feeling slightly shaken.  Unconsciously she noticed that he had stiffened slightly and hand had shifted unnoticed to the hilt of the broad sword and realized, even through the noise of the station he had managed sense her approaching.  A normal human's hearing wasn't that sensitive, not even a member of SOLDIER's hearing was that good.  Tifa had been trained as a fighter, by one of the best martial artists on the planet, on how to move silently with grace, but at this moment her training had failed her.

"Cloud?  Is that you?" She asked hesitantly from a distance, ready to spring back if the situation turned to hostile.

He stood up turning to face her, his eyes widened in surprise, forgotten sword falling unnoticed to the ground. 

". . .Ti  -Tifa?"  He managed to stammer out, his glowing blue orbs staring at her in disbelief.    

- - - - 

Author's Notes:

Everyone remember how during the train ride back from the first mission?  If you talk to the guy at the back of the train he comments on how no body ever talks to him, apart from Cloud.  That is where this fanfic came from. . .  but if you think about it both Cloud and Tifa think that each other is dead. . .thats why Cloud looks so surprised.  This is my story I wrote this for English, and my teacher gave me a C . . .eh. . .*sweatdrops*     

(c) Sqaresoft 

All Characters and places used in this fanfic belong to Squaresoft. I don't own Final Fantasy VII, Cloud or Tifa.  


End file.
